


Strike Once

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Series: What You Leave Behind [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Doomed Relationship, Dwarf Courting, Dwarf Culture & Customs, Dwarf Noble Origin, Dwarven Traditions, F/M, Falling In Love, Kissing, Making Out, Pre-Canon, Secret Relationship, Sparring, The Vambrace Discourse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-31 04:15:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6455365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Princess Aeducan has a completely reasonable request of her Second.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strike Once

**Author's Note:**

> The details about dwarven vambraces is 1000% not my idea, but borrowed from horticulturalcephalopod on tumblr. Thank you!!!
> 
> Set in 9:27, approximately 3 years before the start of the Fifth Blight.

“There was a close call on that last expedition,” says Princess Aeducan one morning when Gorim arrives at her chambers. She is already fully dressed and armored, her hair braided around the crown of her head, and her thoughtful expression suggests that she has been awake to dwell on this for hours. 

Instead of vocalizing his confusion, something he tries not to do, Gorim tries to think what she means. He remembers a protracted encounter near Cadash thaig two days before, but the princess felled a dozen darkspawn on her own while he was pinned in a rock crevice by another wave, but she’d sustained no injuries, and her armor had only needed a few minor repairs. It had been dangerous, but what wasn’t in the Deep Roads? The journey home had been peaceful, and they’d suffered no losses in their company.

So, Gorim shakes his head and stands at the top of the stairs while she paces the outer circle of the room. “It was nothing you couldn’t handle, Lady Aeducan.”

This is not, apparently, the right thing to say. Princess Aeducan turns to look up at him with a small crease in the center of her forehead, and she shakes her head. 

“No,” answers the princess firmly. “I saw the field. I should have been faster to relieve you.” Her face breaks into a kinder smile, the sort that Gorim is familiar with. Too familiar. It is the sort that speaks to her friendly affection for him, unspoken but unmistakable, and a hundred things he should discourage between them, but has permitted his imagination to run freely with.. 

_Should_ , but does not because the thought is too painful. Gorim long ago gave up pretending he doesn’t love his princess beyond the mere devotion typical of a second. 

“You will need to stop going easy on me in training,” the princess finally concludes, quitting her pacing directly in front of Gorim. Her expression suggests this is something that is obvious to the both of them and not the result of her hours of thought. “I can do better, and there isn’t anyone who can push me as far as you can, Gorim.” 

Trying to mask his jerk of surprise to find her so close to him, Gorim opens his mouth to protest, “Lady Aeducan, if you think I’m not fulfilling my duties—”

“It’s not that.” She takes his hand into hers and smiles so earnestly that Gorim can feel his chest swelling with longing that has only intensified with time. “I think you’re afraid to hurt me.”

Gorim swallows thickly through the sudden dryness in his throat. Whatever she might say next, he knows he will agree to, no matter what it is. Still, he attempts: “You can’t possibly expect me to actually try and hurt you.” 

“No,” she agrees, giving his hand a warm squeeze. “But I expect you to help me get better. Orzammar needs the best from both of us.”

Gorim can hardly refuse after that, which is why he finds himself securing his armor and testing his blade in the quiet seclusion of the Princess’s private training arena. This has been one of the many perks of his position in House Aeducan, but Gorim has more reason to be grateful for the privacy than usual. Second or no, he doesn’t relish the thought that someone might see the sort of training session she seems to be hoping for.

“Are you ready?” When he looks up, Princess Aeducan stands ready with her practice helm under one arm and the point of her sword hovering just above the stone floor beyond the padded practice arena. Gorim nods and she pulls the helm over her tightly-braided hair as she passes him on her way onto the mats. “Don’t go easy on me.”

The princess bows to him, as she always does, and then lifts her shield to await his first blow, her feet spreading a little too far apart. She’s never been knocked off balance by her stance, typically relying on her power to compensate for her balance, and it is almost certainly because of this that no one’s bothered to break the habit. Gorim takes advantage of it now, feinting a long, rounding blow from the side — an easy one that he can see frustrates her, because she opens her mouth to chide him for it — and ducks low when she pushes backward to block and counterstrike. 

Gorim knows her well. Even if he didn’t watch her every movement with ardent devotion from the moment Princess Aeducan offered him her hand in the Proving arena, he could hardly have stood at her side for years without learning her style of attack. He sees her move as if time has slowed around them, her weight falling back to give power to the forward thrust of her sword. Gorim pulls his shield to cover his chest, angled so her sword slides uselessly across the surface, and sweeps his leg out beneath the princess, who goes down into a heap of armor with a grunt of surprise.

“Your feet,” Gorim tells her when he helps her back up to her feet. Her grip lingers on his forearm, fingertips grazing along the patterns on his engraved vambrace in an intimate gesture that sets Gorim’s heart racing. 

When he doesn’t continue for what must have been too long, distracted by her hand on his forearm, Princess Aeducan echoes, “My feet?” 

“Too wide,” he manages through the fog in his head, withdrawing to retrieve her shield for her. “Your feet are too far apart when you counter. If you keep them closer, you could probably reduce the time it takes you to strike.”

The princess takes back her shield and tests her range of motion with a quick roll of her shoulders before falling back into her defensive posture. Her feet are closer together, her position stronger for it already. 

“Try attacking me this time, then,” Gorim suggests, adjusting his helm and turning his side to her to minimize what she can reach of him. His head is still buzzing with all the different reasons she might touch him the way she does, before concluding once more that he has no reason to think that it means anything more than his princess is kind, warm, and far better than he deserves to have in his life.

“Very well,” she agrees, lifting her sword and saluting him with it before lunging forward with a powerful attack that Gorim recognizes instantly and knocks aside with his shield. Their return to sparring jerks him back to the present. Princess Aeducan recovers quickly, before he has the chance to counter her attack, and slams her shield against his, shoving hard enough to throw him back if he were less careful. Gorim jabs his sword forward, but the princess is still too quick for him, and his sword glances off the side of her breastplate. Still, it’s close enough that he thinks for a moment that she might actually be hurt. 

The princess leaves him no time to think twice about it. Her next blow comes in hard and echoes down through his spine in a way he’s sure he’ll feel when they finish, and Gorim parries the one after. They trade rattling blows after that, one for one, and they even seem evenly matched now that Gorim has abandoned his concern for overpowering her. Her gauntlet catches on his when she pulls her shield down hard, trying to draw him into a leg sweep not dissimilar to the one he used on her, but Gorim leaps back to avoid it, battle fever whistling in his ears.

Princess Aeducan’s next blow knocks his shield clattering across the room and it is only his swift reflexes that saves him from the necessity of replacing one of the belts holding his chestplate to the rest of his armor. A stubborn grunt escapes his lips, and he sidesteps another attack, dodging back, to the side, and then darting forward to thrust his sword past her shield. It misses her, but he has her on the defensive now, retreating toward the edges of the room with every step. She’ll soon have no choice but to fight past him, or else yield the match.

“Yield,” he calls, brushing aside her next thrust. Instead, the princess lunges forward with her shield, but Gorim is ready for her with his own. He repeats, “yield!”, but she shoves hard against him. Strong and fast and talented as she is, Gorim still has this single advantage over her. He knocks aside her shield with brutal force, pins her sword arm with one hand, and lifts his sword to her thinly-armored neck. 

“I yield,” Princess Aeducan finally pants out, the catch in her breath all Gorim needs to remember himself, just who she is and what he’s doing.

“Lady—” 

His apology is cut off not by the abrupt clattering of her sword on the paving stones beneath their boots, but the roar in his blood when she seizes him by the ears and kisses him hard. Her teeth bite into his lip, urging him to respond, but Gorim is undone, paralyzed and numb to everything but her fevered skin on his. He doesn’t realize that the sharp edges of her helm is pricking him until she rips his off and drops it where her shield lies abandoned on the floor. His sword falls away next, edge tipped away from her neck so as not to cut even a single one of her hairs. 

“Princess.” Gorim doesn’t recognize his voice when he lifts her helm from her precious head and watches her eyes, dark with panic, search his face for something other than the wide-eyed shock that must be etched there. “I—I overstep myself. I’m sorry, I—”

Of course it’s all so obvious now that Gorim can no longer rationalize every detail of the last three years of their lives together. It must be apparent to anyone watching them circling around one another, his longing stares after her lingering touches and extravagant kindnesses. Ancestors, _she_ was the one who presented him with the pair of fine vambraces he wears. He’d assumed she’d placed the seal of House Aeducan on them to display his status as her Second. Had any other woman done so, he would have known the gesture for what it was, but Gorim has been blind when it comes to Princess Aeducan, since the very first moment he met her.

“Bryn,” she insists, more firmly than usual. “Gorim, please—” 

It occurs to him much later the irony that this is the moment she finds the particular authoritative quality that her brother Trian mastered so early in life. But having made her opening maneuver, the princess now waits for him to move next. Mouth swollen and parted, her naked eagerness is more persuasive than any command she might have given him. 

Gorim takes her round face into shaking hands, testing the strength of his revelation of her affection, but the princess doesn’t draw away. He doesn’t understand why she’s chosen him, and he may never know whether the day she did so was blessed or blighted. It no longer matters.

At the very instant the tattered remains of his resolve crumples and Gorim pulls her against her chest, Princess Aeducan rocks forward onto her toes and crushes her mouth against his. The princess takes advantage of his parted mouth and captures his lip between her teeth. He staggers backward and their feet dance around the other’s in a blind dance that ends with her shoving Gorim’s back against the wall and the two of them sinking down in tandem.

Gorim has kissed a few women in the last few years, but he gave up on that venture sometime after he decided it was unfair to imagine his lady princess instead of one of the many perfectly eligible young women his father has been gently encouraging him to marry since he came of age. He has fantasized about the Lady Aeducan more times than he cares to admit, but perhaps not like this: her knees shoved into the stone floor on either side of his hips, half-lounging on the floor, fully armored and high with battle lust. For once, reality is far better: her lips are more plush than he might have imagined in even his most daring fantasy, her mouth warmer, softer, and she at least as eager for him as he is for her. 

That and any other line of thought comes to an abrupt end when the princess cards her fingertips through his beard, tipping his head back to mouth at the singularly uncovered patch of skin of his neck, just under his overly-sensitive ears. Gorim utters wholly undignified, shuddering moans that echo through the chamber. Private as the room may be, some rational alarm in his brain reminds him that any noise at all might be dangerous for them. He quiets himself, but his princess doesn’t seem to notice. She dedicates herself to kissing him again, and Gorim recklessly loses himself to this, too.

When he comes to himself again, it’s only because they are both short of breath, and because Princess Aeducan has leaned back to look him over. Gorim is afraid to ask her what she sees, too frightened that she will reconsider the favor she’s bestowed on him. But she seems to be satisfied, because she traces her bare fingers along the underside of his eye, where he now feels a bruise beginning to rise from their sparring match. One or more of the straps on his armor is loose, and the braid in his beard is completely undone, but the princess looks at him with such intense admiration that it makes him blush.

But she is no better off with her cheeks flushed a dusky rose and her braids — usually perfectly centered and taut — are loose. A few pieces of black hair stray from the crown of her head to frame her face. The vision before him is hardly fair — it only makes Gorim want to kiss her breathless all over again — and then she twirls the tousled braid next to his ear around her finger and bends forward to kiss the shell of his ear. 

“Oh, Gorim,” she sighs warmly. “I’ve been waiting for you to kiss me since I was sixteen.” She seems almost embarrassed by this confession, the very tip of her nose turning pink. It doesn’t last long, because her expression returns to radiant delight when Gorim captures her wrist and turns her hand so he can kiss her palm, which she presses to his cheek in turn.

How long could he possibly have been so ignorant, assuming her affection was innocent, no different than the friendship other nobles share with their seconds? “Surely not that long.” 

“Longer,” she answers seriously, settling against his chest with a happy noise. “But I thought you might think me silly if I told you.”

He wants to tell her that he will never take anything more seriously than her feelings, never, no matter what. “You don’t have to tell me,” he assures her instead, deciding this is somewhat less dramatic a statement, and pulls his arms around her.

They can’t be found like this, he knows that, and no one will ever be able to know this about them, though Gorim has not the smallest idea how they will hide it. Sometime, sooner than either of them might like, they will need to compose themselves again and mimic their lives as they were before, pretending that nothing has changed between them and that there is nothing to threaten their fragile secret.

Princess Aeducan’s eyes close peacefully. “Just stay with me, Gorim,” she sighs, apparently oblivious to his thoughts.

Keeping watch over her when she leans deeper into his chest, Gorim thinks that she hardly need ask it of him. It is hardly as though he will ever do anything else so long as he has a life to give to her.

**Author's Note:**

> I will neither confirm nor deny that my goal in writing this ship is to break hearts and ruin lives.


End file.
